FaceMate

by Steven M. Greenberg

  “OK, whatever. Let him do his thing then—But don’t encourage it, OK? Hey—why don’t you have him do a match for you? Maybe that’ll distract him for a while.”

  “He’d have the same problem with me he’s having with you if I sent him a current photo.”

  “Why? What kind of problem is that?”

  “Yeah, well here’s the thing, Ben, here’s the skinny: I guess that eighty-some percent of the pictures in the site are kids—You probably know that, don’t you?—So how are they supposed to match us old guys up when their data file for old guys is so limited?”

  Ben nodded, paused, thought a while, then answered:

  “OK, fair enough. But I understood that the program goes back and forth in time—didn’t you tell me that? So can’t they extrapolate old guys backwards or the young kids forwards to get their goddam match?”

  “They probably can, but I’m guessing the matching is less accurate when they don’t have a younger photo of a person for reference—Unless they try to match you up with a kid who looked like you when you were his age—Is that the kind of match you’d really like?”

  Bang! That did it: Just what Eddie was expecting. In an instant, in a heartbeat, Ben got quiet; Ben got pensive. You could see it in his face, the drooping lips, the wrinkled brow, the downcast eyes. A hundred times and more this sort of sudden fit of sadness had come upon his friend in Eddie’s presence: A twenty-something couple in a restaurant who bore a faint resemblance to Ben and Lizzie at that age; a pretty blonde girl who looked a tiny bit like Liz walking down the street; the mere and distant mention of that name—Lizzie, Elizabeth, Liza even; anything remotely close; a voice that sounded similar to hers; the slightest reference or allusion to the kind of relationship the two of them had had, the way things had been—And—Bam!—it all came back with a vengeance. Eddie had anticipated this tonight as much as ever, and he was prepared. And after all, what else could he possibly have done? Ben had to be told: Somehow or other, he had to be forewarned. And he was ready now in a way, his mind and mood were ripe for revelation, so Eddie took the plunge and kicked the whole thing off by saying:

  “Benny, listen. I’ve got something to tell you. Maybe you’ll be upset, maybe not, but I did something, I found something you need to know about. You don’t like getting left out of the loop, so I’m gonna tell you whether you want me to or not….”

  That follow-up introduction did the trick. Ben perked up with interest, the sorrow halfway disappeared, the chill manifestly warmed. The girls had been listening—how could they not have been? Eddie hadn’t particularly noticed them listening, so intent was he on what he had to say to Ben. But the eerie quiet all around alerted him to the fact that the voices to his right were silent and the corresponding ears were open wide. He glanced over to verify, met Charlotte’s eyes, nodded, gave a sympathetic smile toward Carole’s anxious gaze across the table, and continued:

  “Look, Bennie: The kids—Alex mostly—although Rajiv is the guy he gets to do his messaging: I got their goddamn emails every day pressing me for….” Eddie took a hefty lungful in and blew it out. “Look, they had it in their minds that they couldn’t do a decent match without a picture of you when you were younger, and I tried to explain to them….”

  “Did you tell them why, Eddie? Did you tell them why there aren’t any pictures?”

  “I told them some of it, yeah. I had to.”

  “So? That should be end of it, then. Once they know the story, there’s no point in them asking anymore.”

  “Right; and I told them that. But they still kept on bugging me—all day every day, like I’m telling you. So what I did…. OK, let me ask you something then, Benny. Let’s consider a hypothetical: What if there was a picture from back then? Let’s say there was. How would you feel if somebody came up with one?”

  “There aren’t any, though. Not of me; I’m sure of that. Carole’s family maybe still has some baby pictures of….”

  “Of Lizzie, right? I know it’s hard for you to even say her name. It was hard for all of us, you know. We all went through the exact same kind of misery that you did, though maybe to a whole lot lesser degree.”

  Ben looked solemn, of course, but he hadn’t quite retreated to that solitary place Eddie had seen him sink into before at such depressing times. He was alert, communicative, attentive—maybe even a little bit curious about what amazing revelations were about to slip from Eddie’s loosened tongue. And sensing Bennie’s untoward curiosity, Eddie plowed ahead and spewed the whole thing out in one long continuous nervous breath:

  “We—Charlotte and I—we came across a picture. Neither of us really knew it was there for sure, but there was one. And we found it.”

  Ben’s moist eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open wide.

  “A picture? Of … of me?”

  “Yeah, of you when you were young—But….” Eddie paused, then resumed as delicately, as hesitantly as a young man telling his wife he was being sent into mortal combat and didn’t think that he’d return: “It wasn’t just of you though.”

  “So—Oh my God! You’re saying…? You’re not saying it’s of me and … and….”

  “It is though. The both of you; you and her both. It probably was taken just before—well, you know what I’m trying to say. So—I didn’t want to send it to the FaceMate guys without your knowing what we’d found.”

  Ben was literally reeling, in a visible state of shock. But it wasn’t the somber kind of shock Eddie had seen him in before on such potentially depressing occasions. To Eddie’s right, beyond his view, Charlotte sniffled, and Carole blew her nose. Aside from that, there was an eerie silence all around them, but for the droning public babble far out in the periphery of the open room, and the faintest tinkling of surrounding dinnerware of patrons close at hand. The table to their immediate left was eerily silent as well, as though the people dining there knew the story and were rendered dumb by it. For a while it seemed to Eddie that the whole establishment was hushed beyond the norm, though maybe the actual reason for the relative quiet was that his ears had grown a little numb. For if he concentrated, if he listened very hard, he could still hear the ordinary hubbub of a restaurant at its busy time, the hum of conversation punctuated rarely by a treble laugh; and now and then a word or two spoken out with some distinction, though none of the muffled iterations were all that clear. And in this eerie quiet, Eddie thought: Maybe everyone knew Ben’s story. Maybe all the people in Manhattan this evening were rendered silent because they somehow knew.

  “Have you got it?” Ben asked abruptly. And with this sudden unexpected inquiry, it was Eddie’s turn to be in shock.

  “Got it?” Ben’s penetrating eyes were like two spotlights of interrogation; and, caught up in their mesmerizing power, Eddie stammered: “W-What do you mean?”

  “Do you have it with you now, Eddie?—The picture, I’m asking: Did you bring it here?”

  “The picture? The one we found?”

  “Sure, the picture. What the hell are we talking about anyway?”

  “Uh, no, I haven’t got it with me here, not now. I….”

  “Where is it then?”

  “It’s…. I took the one we found—the original—I brought it down to graphics for Art to copy and enhance. It’s really old, you know. Some of the color is faded here and there. And there are lots of spots where it got rubbed, and some folds and cracks as well. You know—It’s thirty-some years old, Bennie, and it wasn’t taken care of very well, so I thought we oughta fix it up and make a better copy.”

  “Fix it up to send, right?”

  “Yeah, just the picture of you, though; that’s all our buddy Alex needs. But I didn’t want to cut it up. It didn’t seem right to cut it up. Not even the copy.”

  “No, you shouldn’t cut it up. Nobody ever ought to cut that picture up.”

  “So you’re not upset then? It’s OK for me to send it to the kids? I didn’t want to send it till I got the go-ahead from you.”

  “No,
Eddie, I don’t mind. Let Alex do his matching thing and have his fun. I’d … Look, I’d kind of like to see it though. I think I’d like to see it.”

  “You would? You’re telling me you really would?”

  At which dramatic point poor Carole couldn’t help but interject. She leaned across the table, put her hand on Ben’s, and told him in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper:

  “I think you should, Ben. I think it would be good for both of us. It’s been over thirty years now, and I think it’s finally time.”

  Ben put his other hand atop Carole’s and nodded: “Maybe you’re right, sweetheart. And you too, Eddie—you’ve always had my back in everything I’ve ever done. Rich or poor, happy or depressed, you’ve been there for me, always. There’s nothing you and Charlotte could ever do that would upset me. You’re all absolutely right in what you’re saying. Thirty years is time enough to grieve. It’s time for all of us to close the book on our tragedies and get on with our lives.”

  So that was it, about as all-encompassing a sanction as ever any friend of Ben’s could ever get. Eddie’s mind was free, the taboo subject broached, the coast was absolutely clear. And therefore:

  Down to Graphics in the morning, first thing, to pick the processed pictures up. The original was sheathed in a clear protective sleeve. Art explained that such a covering was archival; it would preserve its contents for a thousand years. Keep it out of the light, though, he told Eddie. Eddie promised that he would.

  The enhanced copies—Art had made a dozen of them—were something to behold! Brilliant colors, crystal clear imagery, enlarged to 8 X 10: You might have been looking through fragrant summer air at the couple standing on the lawn in the evening sun holding one another, smiling in their optimistic joy. It was Lizzie’s house, maybe a week, maybe a month before the party that would be her last. So clear and radiant the picture that you almost felt you could turn your eyes rightward down the block to see that schizo asshole’s house, that bastard Eugene Everhardt who’d died in the asylum that the judge had locked him up in, with a well-paid mobster’s thoughtful help.

  Good riddance! One thing about Bennie, his wish was your command. Whatever the business happened to be, however difficult, someone would eventually get it done. Ben was always fair and always just to everyone. Old Eugene deserved a kind of justice that the law had failed to give him. Turned out, that wound up being Eddie’s role: not vengeance as much as overdue completion.

  Maybe Ben was pissed a little when he learned his unmade wish had been fulfilled. But the whole world was a whole lot better off the day that Eugene Everhardt’s existence was complete.

  “You Mr. Patel?”

  “Uh-huh’”

  “Rajiv Patel?”

  “Uh-huh. This come from Atherton? My girl out there, the redhead—Andi—She said you were delivering something from Atherton—This it?”

  “Yes, sir, from Atherton. I’ll need your signature—down here, if you don’t mind. Sign it, please, for Mr. Parker. He always requires a signature on the valuables he ships.”

  “You the pilot? That looks like a pilot’s uniform. You the guy who flew it out?”

  “Yes, sir. Took off at ten-fifteen and landed here at noon. Nice little airport you folks got here. No traffic, no delay.”

  “No, there weren’t any tie-ups when we flew out either. But … we had a different guy who flew us in and out of Red Bank when we went.”

  “Yes, sir, I believe that was a weekend and I was off that day. Matthew probably picked you up and flew you home. Well, here’s your delivery, sir. I believe there’s a tear-strip at the top. Be careful when you open it, Mr. Parker said to tell you.”

  And he was careful. When the pilot bowed and left—name of Brendan, according to his name tag—Rajiv zipped the tear-strip open right along the perforated line, finding a glossy cardboard wrapper inside. He opened the flap, fingered out the contents—which consisted of a Mylar sheet, covering a glassine wrapping, covering … aha! There were the photos. At last!

  And when he pulled them out, inspecting them, he found them to be—Fantastic! Terrific! Exactly what they’d need! Six identical copies, 8 X 10, enlarged, enhanced, colors fresh, imagery sharp as top notch photographic imagery could be—taken of a couple of young kids, same age, or maybe a little younger than he and Alex were now, back when the picture was snapped.

  You couldn’t miss Ben—God no! There were those brilliant blue eyes again, though the face around the eyes was way younger, way prettier—pretty for a boy in the way that Ben as a grown-up man was handsome nowadays as a grown-up man. The guy in the picture was Ben for sure, but he was a different sort of Ben. There was an elation in his face, a happiness in his smile, a certainty in his demeanor, that was largely absent now. And there was an innocence too, a jaunty optimism in his expression that told you he was on the very top of the world, that life was so good, so unspeakably joyous, it couldn’t get any better than it was. Not a flicker of trepidation that all that joy and gladness would someday change. Life is better that way; Rajiv philosophized, half the happiness in life is thinking it will never end.

  Yep, Ben was a terrific-looking dude back in the day, that was for sure—Oh, but that girl! What had Eddie said? Cute as a button? Vi’s cute, he’d said, but not quite button-cute: Wow! This picture showed exactly what he’d meant. Blond hair, blue eyes—not as intense or arresting as Ben’s, maybe, but bright enough to draw you in. Then the perfect mouth, the perfect teeth the smiling mouth exposed, the perfect little chin—no dimple in the chin like Ben’s, but so incomparable a face that the dimple would have been a distraction, an impediment. Great face, great figure, great everything. Just one look at this long-departed female in the picture and you were awestruck, mesmerized. When Eddie’d called last night to say the photo would be on its way in the morning, pending Ben’s approval, he’d cautioned that it never be shown to Ben without Eddie’s express consent. And knowing the history of Ben’s grief, the how and why and length of it, there wasn’t much of a problem in understanding why.

  OK, well, history aside, Alex would be pleased as punch to get the picture digitized and finally entered in. With a hundred million young guys’ faces to mate with—the boyish half of the two hundred million in their file—now for sure they’d find a match to show Ben Atherton what a winning thoroughbred he’d staked his fifty million on. Maybe they hadn’t found a proper match for Ben in middle age, but a proper Ben as a kid of twenty-three—hell, that should be a cinch.

  So back into the Mylar sheet and glassine covering the duplicated pictures went, and off rushed Rajiv to Alex’s cloistered digs. The door was sealed up tight, of course, though luckily the red light wasn’t on. Alex didn’t suffer fools as gladly as another fellow might, that was true; but even the cleverest visitors to his tomb-like work-space didn’t fare too terribly well with him. Rajiv was smart—nobody had ever contested his being in the IQ bell curve’s rightmost one percent—But with Alex, no matter how demonstrably smart you were, you felt like a moron when Alex Daugherty was in the room. It wasn’t as if he was rude or demeaning—that would be a waste of precious time. It wasn’t as though he was pedantic or boastful of his intellect—for Alex didn’t give a good goddamn about what any other human being thought. It wasn’t as though Alex was much of anything other than, well, Alex, a sort of unique example among his kind. He wasn’t vocal, he wasn’t social, he wasn’t capable of even turning his head or making the slightest gesture of cordiality or even tacit recognition toward another person in the room. But what he was, was the smartest son-of-a-bitch Rajiv had ever known. And whatever else he was beyond that, was OK. For being Alex was simply Alex’s way.

  So good to go: No noise inside, no red bulb giving the intended visitor a pause, and therefore Rajiv gamely tapped, not too loud, not too soft. “Hey, it’s me, Aley—It’s Rajiv.”

  No answer—Which meant it was AOK with Alex to come on in. One thing about Alex—if he didn’t want you, he wasn’t afraid to send you packing on you
r way. The lock clicked open and Rajiv tiptoed inside.

  “I’ve got it—The picture you wanted of Ben. It just this minute came.”

  Alex typed; he was facing away, toward the computer, as always, and the monitor flashed:

  YNG? The writing said.

  Rajiv was practically ecstatic to tell him that, yes, the Ben depicted in the photo there in the envelope there in his fingers was adequately young. He further elaborated: “It’s an old picture of the two of them together, Ben and the girl—the one that died, like I told you. Eddie said he didn’t want to cut it apart. Man, Alex, buddy! Wait till you see that girl! She was really something!”

  Alex tapped the desk with a finger. A dirty finger—red stuff on it, and on the index fingernail a yellow stain. There was a day-old pizza in a cardboard flat at the outer edge of the desk. Alex had ordered it in yesterday afternoon—or maybe the day before; Rajiv had taken it from the delivery guy and brought it in to Alex himself, which day exactly, or which pizza exactly, he wasn’t absolutely sure. Not atypical though, as to time of decay—Alex could take up to three days to finish off a pie. Sometimes he’d forget it was there, order in a burger and gravy fries, then rediscover the pizza the following day. Nothing went to waste though. No matter how petrified the foodstuffs looked, no matter what color the mold, Alex would polish them off eventually. Rajiv thought it miraculous that he never wound up sick.

  Rajiv waited patiently until Alex came alive to type, and the letters flashed in 72-point font across the screen:

  LVE ON DSK THN GO.

  Rajiv set the cover envelope on the desk, as instructed to do, tapped Alex gently on the shoulder with sincere affection—for they were friends, whatever, forever, no matter what—and left.

  A day or two for the picture of Ben to get processed. Then the analysis, the comparison. The computer would kick some young man’s image out within a couple of days. Whether Ben would like the guy they matched him with, they’d simply have to see.